


Me Too

by PlasticStraws (ofWildflowersandPoisonedEarth)



Category: American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Heartbreak, Kissing, Lemon-Aid, Nightmares, No smut fluff, Romantic Fluff, Sad Fluff, Talking, True Love, When Life Hands You Lemons, descriptions of past abuse, make lemonade, white house black magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 17:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14453901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofWildflowersandPoisonedEarth/pseuds/PlasticStraws
Summary: Madison and Kyle have something very sad in common.





	Me Too

 

His head was a tumble of blonde curls, a little too brassy for his complexion in the midday beam of sun. Of course, it may have been that his complexion was far too ashen when he slept, as he lay flat on his back with his arms folded across his chest.

Madison stood watching him in the doorway for a long time, feeling the scowl melt from her face. He still looked so, well - dead - when he slept. Madison knew there was a part of Kyle that was dead that all the spells in the world could never revive. Some parts of us die a kind of permanent death, taking a piece of soul along with them. Madison supposed his sweet, kind face probably looked dead when he was all alone in his head for a long time before the crash, and that hers did now too. She felt her defective heart swell, seeming to fill her body, choke the breaths in her throat, and keep going until the huge white room was filled with her love and pain. She wouldn't cry. Alpha females didn't cry. They didn't cut. They didn't break. They didn't beg. They screwed the lid on tighter, starved themselves, and ordered another new Minimale Animale swimsuit because they were the only ones who could pull them off. Her eyes stung, and she exhaled a breath, painful like a serrated blade. He was her one hope; if he couldn't love her forever, then nobody ever could.

Kyle was sleeping on her bed. She'd come to her room to lock the door and be alone. Madison hadn't slept well the night before, and she felt tired.

She'd spent the morning walking aimlessly alone through the French Quarter to amuse herself with the gaucheness of the tourists. It had been particularly fun to watch some poor, probably Midwestern, blonde with a sad haircut, chewed off unevenly, with too short bangs. She had a toddler and a newborn in a double stroller, and was crammed into a pair of cheap H&M leggings. She wore a 2, but had needed a 4. Madison followed her for blocks, laughing inside at the girl's hideous outfit that had cost less than her own pantyhose.

The joke had suddenly turned droll. The girl had stopped to breastfeed on a park bench, and her husband had emerged from a nearby bar with a go cup, and a huge dimpled grin. He was cute in that gung-ho-derbisher-blue-collar-schmuck kind of way that all those Flint boys were. He'd walked right past Madison and not even seen her, his gaze fixed and face aglow for the Teen Mom squared, sitting oblivious, nursing what must have been his second daughter. She'd cast a spell on him that topped anything Madison had ever pulled off, because that Midwestern blonde owned a man's heart forever. Madison was instantly fatigued, returning home feeling somehow defeated by a chick in a tunic from Forever fucking 21.

Her new Charlotte Olympia thigh high boots had given the backs of her heels angry, bloody blisters. She kicked them off and laid down on the bed next to Kyle.

Staring up at the ceiling, Madison rubbed her eyes, trying to blot out the memory of the dream she'd had the night before. It was another iteration of a never-ending string of nightmares that seemed to haunt her.

This time, she'd been at the ocean; still a child, and playing in tame waves in the sun. Suddenly, the warm air had turned chill, and the waves savage. She'd tried to run, but the sand had kept sucking her feet down and swallowing them until she fell. Cold waves pulled her out further and further, and any chance she had to run, her legs buckled beneath her. She'd heard faint laughing that got louder and louder, until she'd realized that the suction of the sand on her limbs was actually the cruel grip of the roots of the mangroves in the dank swamps, and the laughter from a bunch of stupid boys. She was under the water and helpless, drowning on the coldness. When she finally surrendered, and let the cold salt water flood her burning lungs, she became aware of the stabbing pain in her pelvis, as the trees grew through her and pinned her forever to the sinking earth. Then she was dead; a ghost floating over her ruined corpse, but when she looked closer, she was just the Montauk Monster, a strange naked creature who nobody knew or could love, trapped forever to rot in three feet of water, feeding the roots that had murdered her. When she woke up she was hot with shame, and uncontrollably trying to scratch the skin off the palms of her hands.

Even in the light of day, in this bright white room, she felt nothing but dark. She reached over with one of her small scratched-raw hands, and held onto Kyle's hand. It was cool, but it was kind. Zoe, she scoffed at the thought, didn't remember it that way. But Madison had made sure he got his own hands back. She wanted him to have a set of hands that hadn't held her down. Now she loved to hold them. She rolled over slowly, turning her gaze on his face, her lips parted at his innocent beauty. His smile made even the darkest corners bright.

Kyle wasn't smiling now though. He was simply void. Madison knew it wasn't the black magic that had revived him that made him thus. It was something else. It took one to know one. Kyle was like her. He'd been held down too.

Zoe didn't know him. Not really. Madison wasn't about to share it with these beta bitch losers, but she had a witcher sense for trauma and pain. Her whole life she'd seen the tracers, like wavy oilslick ghosts that hung over certain people. She used to avoid them. She'd worried those dirty fingerprints might make their way over onto her, or that those who bore them would desperately latch onto her, slowing her down and stifling her in their pathetic neediness. She hadn't ever been quite sure about the meaning, or why the hand prints lingered where they did; that was, until she'd seen them in the mirror on herself, reflecting like heat off the road, where she'd been hurt and pinned down.

She'd seen tracers on Kyle the night of the party, and pitied him not at all, until she'd understood later on that night. When she'd revived him with Zoe, Madison hadn't really thought he needed a bigger dick. She suspected he was a grower anyway. But in a spasm of uncharacteristic empathy, she'd given him one of her own rapists' offending parts, just because she couldn't bear to return to him the source of his own pain once he'd been parted from it. That's where she'd seen his ghosts lingering from the first moment.

He didn't seem aware of her presence, so Madison inched closer, and still holding his hand, she shifted closer across the bed, until she rested next to him. Movements tentative, she lifted her head and rested in on Kyle's shoulder, hugging his arm to her, and holding his hand between her thighs. This was to no desire of any end. She just wanted to feel close to him.

Kyle was so different than the kinds of boys she'd been with back in her old life, back in Hollywood. She stifled a smirk, that pulled back her full lips across her perfect teeth before she could reign it back in. Last year when her fuck list was splashed across Us Weekly, full of letharios, playboy actors and eurotrash billionaires, if she'd have ever bothered with a poor frat boy from the Ninth Ward, which - honestly, she knew she wouldn't have - some virgin who couldn't drive like Kyle never would have even been memorable enough to rank on the loose leaf. But now, he took her breath away, just sleeping expressionless beside her. Now his was the only name, and the name she scribbled next to her own like some sophomoronic idiot when nobody was around. Madison Spencer. It sounded so pretty. So sweet.

Leaving his hand between her slender legs to cushion her knees from knocking as she lay, she released his hand, and reached over to stroke his face, and brush his hair away from his eyes. They looked sincere even when they were closed. Madison draped her arm across his chest and stretched to gently kiss his jaw, watching to make sure he didn't stir.

Zoe was teaching him to speak again. As Madison stroked his hair, she tried to decide why that bothered her so much. It's not like it might not be nice to be able to visit with him. She bit her lip pensively.

 _It's lonely at the top._ A worn out cliche that everyone had heard and probably glibly uttered and never understood. Madison understood it all too well though, and supposed that's what bugged her about that stupid drip Zoe's interference so much. Speaking made him more human, and human nature sucked. All her life she'd risen above and just been something more. She'd seen the stupid motherfucking village and knew she wanted no part of it. The secret and horrid fate of all alphas was to be alone. The world of beta haters would treat like you like you'd gotten to the top by climbing over everyone. Madison knew that wasn't it at all; you were left all alone at the top because the rest of the world was afraid of heights. Sure Kyle was nothing but a fuck puppet at the beginning; but now he was someone she felt she could pull up to the summit with her. He wasn't quite human anymore, and he was better for it.

"Kyle?", she asked, sounding hollow and tinny, echoing too much under the high ceiling. She secretly worried that she wasn't that good of an actress. She hated how empty her delivery of lines always sounded, and talking to a half vegetative frat boy created the same wooden effect. She cringed.

Her perfect brows knitted as she watched his face for even a glimmer of sentience. Nothing. He was still asleep, dreamless and leaden.

She exhaled impatiently and glared, resting her head back on his shoulder.

As she laid there, feeling his chest slowly rise and fall under her arm, and the faint breeze of his breath on her forehead, an idea slowly formed in Madison's mind, her blinks growing heavy. She didn't need him to talk back.

"I know what happened to you, you know.", she said tenderly, raising her head up just enough to see his face, still peaceful as he slept. "It happened to me too. That party wasn't the first time. It was just the worst time."

She paused. "Well, maybe not even the worst time. You'll probably get this - there can be a lot of worst times. Somehow, they can all be the worst time, can't they?", she asked him softly, gently rubbing her thumb across his cheek. He wasn't the one crying, the one with a tear to wipe away, but Madison was too proud to acknowledge her own.

"Who did it to you?", she asked him quietly. "I've thought about that a lot, and I think I know. A woman, right? Not to be gross, but I saw where your trauma was.", her face clouded over. "I know what men do. It wasn't that."

There was a catch, barely perceptible, in Kyle's slow breaths. Madison cuddled closer to his comforting body, hugging him tight and kissing his neck.

"It's okay. It wasn't your fault. There's nothing wrong with you. There was something wrong with her."

Madison didn't even hear her own voice. The words were starting to sound real.

"I don't even know who did it to me. I don't know their names. You knew them. They were cruel, you know. I hate people. I hate how they have each other, and their fucking security in numbers. And you know what they use it for, each and every time? An excuse to be cruel. Put them together, and all it does is make them feel safe to be monsters. God doesn't want us to be happy; he requires us to be strong. But they aren't, Kyle. All monsters are weak people. They give in. They indulge in every single desire or urge they ever get, most born of their own pathetic jealousy for the strong. Then they all give each other a bunch of excuses."

Kyle's body seemed to stiffen under her, and she could sense he was conscious and listening. He was finally awake. Madison hesitated, freezing, her head growing heavy on his shoulder, scared to even blink. She questioned if she should keep talking. She didn't know how much of a handle on the English language Kyle had yet. She longed to trust him, but she had to wonder if he would repeat this all back to that pathetic manic pixie dreamgirl bullshit Zoe.

"Mmm-M-", Kyle muttered, opening his big brown eyes. "Muh-mm-"

"Madison?", she asked, lifting her head, searching his face, "Are you trying to say Madison? I'm right here." She cursed her enthusiasm; that she'd been so anxious to ask him that she'd actually cut him off and compromised any hope she'd had of seeming not to care.

Her heart sank as he shook his head no.

"Monsters?', she asked, but he just looked placidly confused.

As she watched him, a look of consternation took over his face and he shook with effort, frustrated by his limitations. Madison tried to no avail to shed the shame of the part she'd played, trapping him in his own head with his pain. She understood it all too well herself.

"M-mom.", he finally uttered, shaky but clear.

Her icy face collapsed, slid and fell like an avalanche. Her hand clapped to her lips as she gasped, before instinctively reaching to console Kyle with a gentle touch on his cheek.

"Ah, Kyle...", she felt the words extruded in a painful wheeze, "Kyle, I'm so sorry. Of course it was. That's why you couldn't fight back. That's why you killed her."

Looking up at the beautiful girl propped on his chest, Kyle nodded, sad eyes filled with the shame and horror.

Madison's eyes, usually snapping with rage and fire were extinguished in a flood of tears. In the ashes of anger, there was only sadness. She leaned down and kissed Kyle's forehead, stroking his hair, as much to soothe herself as him.

"It's okay. Kyle, it's okay. I understand. My mom... she pushed me all the time. She was stuck in some Zip City hell nightmare, in some town so small people went to Walmart for an outing. She used me to get out when she was too old to do it for herself. She called me fat, stupid, beligerent. I was scared all the time, felt responsible for her happiness, for the security of my whole family. She didn't care what happened to me, what they did to me, how they ripped me apart into little pieces and cannibalized me--"

Kyle's arms still felt heavy and unfamiliar as he raised them, wrapping them around the small, crying girl. His brain still felt slow and foggy, like every thought required walking through quicksand that half the time he got caught in and couldn't get out of. He was trying to figure out exactly what she was saying; while that wasn't entirely clear to him, he could understand how she was feeling.

"I killed a director. It wasn't because the old fucknut said I couldn't hit my mark. It was because the decrepit old fucknut said I couldn't hit my mark after making me suck his pitiful little two and a half inch cat dick to get the job. My mom didn't care. They'd been requiring my blood sacrifice for years. I tried to tell her, but you know what she said, Kyle?", Madison asked, anguished, face streaked in black tears.

"She said, 'me too'. She just said it happened to her before too, just to get her shitty job at a Comfort Inn. To everyone. That she didn't pity me, her own daughter. A child. She was cold, and hard hearted, and only cared about her own pain. She said I wasn't special."

Madison rolled away from Kyle, grabbing a cigarette from the nightstand and lighting it. She took a long drag, looking up at the ceiling, before adding coldly, "That's why I killed him. I didn't have the heart to kill Mom, because she took it and destroyed it. Do you have any idea the gift I gave you by killing you, so you could do what I never could?", she asked Kyle, a tinge of resentment in her voice. "You get to be free. You got to get your revenge."

She smoked the rest of her cigarette in silence, feeling pinned to the bed and paralyzed, oblivious to the man beside her for a moment.

"I'm still sorry, Kyle.", she finally said, extinguishing her cigarette in a glass next to the bed. "I'm sorry that happened to you. And for this; what I did to you. You never deserved any of it. You're so pure and good. You always were."

Impulsively, Madison rolled over on top of Kyle. Her short sequin skirt rode up as her slim legs straddled his athletic thighs. She felt warm against his body, and Kyle lifted his arms, gripping her waist with his own hands, feeling her bare skin.

Something about him was different since he'd died. He felt like somewhere, sometime, he'd heard someone ask what it was about being dead that made you so horny. He found himself already aggressively thrusting up against Madison, but she put a firm hand on one of his hips and kissed his ear gently as she said, "No."

"No. I don't want that right now.", she whispered softly. "Is that what I've done to you? Made you feel like you had to do that? Because I made you? You don't have to. I just wanted to fix you, or make you happy. I just wanted to make you like me. I'm broken. I don't know any other language, Kyle, but I want to do better. You make me feel something... real."

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, lips parted, and leaned down slowly. She let herself feel him under her, as she softly pressed her lips to his.

They were so soft and moist, his tongue firm and velvety. Everything about Kyle was warm, and sweet, and welcoming. His mouth tasted like gum that had been chewed too long; vaguely minty and sweet, and papery. She loved it, inhaled it; sucked his tongue, the air from his lungs, as her lips played against his. He was kissing her back. Madison felt her heart thud so hard she could hear it. This was it, she realized; her first real kiss, after all those boys. This was what love was supposed to feel like. She rested her elbows against his shoulders, wrapping her arms around his head, feeling the tickle of his soft blonde hair against the insides of her forearms. He was perfect.

The enveloping warmth of his heavy embrace, the steady foundation of his steadfast body under hers, and the submission of his sweet kiss left Madison laid emotionally bare for the first time in her life. She could see the hole in her heart growing shut and healing, feel the pain she'd carried in her womb dissipate, hear the black dissonance that seemed to scream in her head, making her say cruel things, finally be silenced. Madison laid down flat on Kyle, sobbing wordlessly, pressing soft kisses on his neck, lost in his arms as his hands gently stroked her back, straying into her long hair to cradle the back of her head.

"Please, please, Kyle. Just stay with me forever.", she pleaded, "Don't ever leave me. We're just the same, and nobody else can ever understand it. I don't want to have to get to know someone else; it's just too hard and too dangerous. I need you."

Kyle felt her small desperate hands caressing his shoulders and face, the guileless kisses on his neck and ears. Twenty some years worth of Madison's withheld tears fell and streaked his flesh. He felt aware of his own hands, how they wanted to hold her and console her. Her warm skin was so soft and smooth that he could barely feel it; his fingers slipping between the ridges of her ribs as he slid his hands up her back, inside her cropped top, holding her tight. Rocking her in his arms, Kyle buried his face in her hair. All of him wanted to love her.

"Kyle, I love you. I love you so much.", Madison gushed, pure emotion just pouring from her; the catharsis of so many years containing every terrible thing was somehow so beautiful - just bittersweet true love, a joy only tainted by the finite nature of life. "Please love me. I'll love you forever, Kyle."

Kyle felt the sting of hot, salty tears fill his eyes for her pain as he waited for the familiar sensation of his heart breaking in empathy, but it never came. Somewhere in his tripped up mind, he knew why. That crude pentagram scar wasn't carved over his heart. He didn't have his heart anymore. It was dead and buried along with the rest of him. He had a soulless rapist's heart now, and it couldn't break for anyone. It just wanted what it wanted.

"I love Zoe."

The cruel, wicked words somehow came easily to him, not even marred by a stutter.

Madison felt them like a dagger, plunged straight through her, even as his hands caressed her skin. The terrible pain of her heart imploding, reduced to dry black dust, blown away like cigarette ash; like nothing but garbage. All her pain, her effort to build and revive him, her care to remove his pain in doing so, her crushing honesty, her genuine interest in knowing him, her beauty, her sex and mouth and hands, her love; all thrown away again, like worthless garbage, by the only person she'd ever truly love.

In anguish, Madison wanted to ask how he could do this to her. To _her,_ of all people. To the only girl who could ever understand him. To someone who had done so much to help him and relieve him of his pain. She was way out of his league, and he was so lucky to have her. She wanted to ask woefully, how he could be so cruel to her who made him and saved him. But she didn't ask. Her tears were dry and cried out. She felt nothing but exhausted and empty. She'd died long ago, and it was stupid to think anyone would ever be so good to her as she'd been to him; Kyle could have given her a pure new life back, but people weren't like that. Of course he wouldn't.

Wooden and stunned, she peeled his arms away and rolled off the bed. Madison wearily picked up a cigarette and her lighter and threw open the window, standing in the humid breeze, flicking her ashes over the sill. She crossed her arms across herself when she finished, flicking the butt down to the ground.

"So, you still wanna fuck?", she asked Kyle with a roll of her big almond eyes, sounding bored and disaffected, her words once again echoing hollow in the high ceilings.


End file.
